Hydropower

For anyone interested in micro or small-scale hydro power, we've developed and launched an online calculator that might be a valuable resource for evaluating potential sites. Evaluating a potential hydro site's output requires understanding a few key factors: Head: The vertical distance the water falls. Flow: The volume of water moving over a specific time. Efficiency: How effectively the turbine and generator convert the water's energy. Losses: Energy lost due to friction in the pipes (penstock). Our calculator at simplifies this by letting you input your estimated Head and Flow. Crucially, it includes a section to help you consider and account for pipe losses, which is …

Good day everyone. We have successfully beat loadshedding during summer months, and can run the whole farm without eskom for months on end. Our setup: 8 x Deye hybrid 12kw 3ph inverters 48 x Shoto SDC-10 Box 5 1 x 10kw & 1 x 20kw grid tie inverters feeding into our microgrid My Problem: WINTER IS COMING! Possible solution:? Use excess irrigation water to run a Pump As Turbine, coupled to a 10kw single phase generator alternator (which is currently not in use and used to supply the main house using a lister diesel engine). Rectify that AC power to DC and feed it into the MPPT input of a separate 10 or 20kw Grid Tie inverte…

My son has a strong stream of water coming down the mountains (head; over 150m) 24/7. To start as an experiment he is considering installing a small hydroelectric 1000w 220v generator and store energy in 4x 105ah gel batteries. Can he connect this generator to a simple 5kva Axpert and use it's MPPT to charge 4 batteries? (he has a surplus Axpert) In view of the fact that this generator will run 24/7, will it take the batteries to SOC of 100% via the Axpert (assuming that due to the amount of water and the head a max output of 800 - 1000w will be possible)? As far as I can remember the Axpert doesn't have a generator input, can he just use the AC i…

Who sells thel locally?

Many people don't realize that there are two different kinds of efficiencies , engineering and scientific. The purpose of using an engineering efficiency is so that you don't waste a lot of time talking about something the engineered device can not Attain. A perfect example of this is a Hydro turbine. A hydro turbine depends on the accelerated mass of water. This mass is absolutely mandatory because the water enters at a high rate of speed. Because you are dealing with a closed system and water is not compressible, it must exit at the same rate of speed. Ever been hit by a truck? Accelerated Mass has huge amounts of energy. When you go to a scientific efficiency you are n…

More laughable, fake, dis- and mis-information for a brainwashed, gullible world that will believe anything and everything that the MSM dishes up. This time about rain-drop power harvesting. You must be kidding me.... The below article was only published a few days ago. https://thedebrief.org/forget-solar-panels-here-come-rain-panels/ ...proof that the IQ of some people has evaporated into nothingness. BTW. This tech will work. It will produce some power for a small microprocessor project. The problem with this story is that the sheeple will think they can boil the kettle with it, if and when it rains. Even if it could, this is so dumb-ass stupi…

So anyone ever though about the following setup: Solar PV water pump which runs during the day The pump pushes water up from a low lying reservoir into a elevated reservoir During times when there is no daylight the reservoir water is emptied from the elevated reservoir into the low lying one Slap some sort of "corkscrew turbine" onto the pipe joining the 2 reservoirs This turbine would spin when the water flows down the pipe generating some power to charge batteries? Or what if we all just connected a "corkscrew turbine" on the municipal water supplies to our homes (after the council meter) so whenever we open a tap we would be generating a bit of power? I …

I have a Chengdu Foster 5kw 220v micro hydro generator that runs off 180kl/h at a head of 11m contact me directly [email protected] unit is in Pretoria East

In an announcement Wednesday, Scottish engineering firm Orbital Marine Power explained how its 2 megawatt O2 turbine had been anchored in a body of water called the Fall of Warness, with a subsea cable linking it to a local electricity network on land. It's expected that the turbine, which is 74 meters long, will "operate in the waters off Orkney for the next 15 years," the company said, and have "the capacity to meet the annual electricity demand of around 2,000 UK homes."

We are off-grid in Southwest New Mexico, USA. For the last 25 years we have used Hydro power with a backup generator for our electricity needs. Changes in weather patterns are causing our river to diminish. I do not think it would be out of the question for the river to completely stop flowing above ground some day. We need to upgrade our system so we are not exclusively reliant on the river and generator. Power Consumption Profile: The hydro plant, as it is, produces 4.5 kW continuous power output. We have an electronic load manager system where you can assign a priority to certain loads and the manager will automatic turn lower priority lo…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/08/powering-up-uk-hills-could-be-used-as-energy-batteries Lots of smaller installations. Not strictly "hydro" because they are using a different fluid.

Ok , so this project has been ongoing for the last three of four years and in fact is still going on we have learned a lot on hydro power and possible pitfalls. but I wont bore you all with the details. Here is what the "final" product looks like. Ps. Not my system , hope to have one going in a year or so - (Need to raise the capital )

Good afternoon.. To all the electricians and solar fundies out there, I need some advise, help with a diy off the grid power project for our home I am planning to build an off the grid electrical system using a home made water turbine which will be running on a river using a treadmill motor as a generator / alternator and up gearing to achieve the rpm needed to output anything from 12 to 24 volts DC. From this it will go to a charge controller and charge the battery bank of say 2 x 12v 105 ah deep cycle battries.. I want to then run a 5kva pure sine wave inverter to supply us our electricity for our home. This system is very much a like a solar panel set up…

About 40 yrs ago a Civil Eng. friend of mine was working on a "pumped hydo" scheme somewhere just south of Durban. I have lost contact with that friend but I was wondering if that scheme ever got up and running and if so what were the results. There is a lot of talk atm about pumped hydro in Oz but to date I don't think much has happened. It does seem like a good way of storing offpeak PV or wind power for use during peak times. Like in RSA, we are short of water at times but surely with a pumped system there would not be a lot of wastage as the water could just be recirculated. Even salt water??? Thoughts/comments??? Cheers. Bill.

My borehole water is 22 degrees C all year every year, -- must be an underground coal seam. I can also pump it all day long as I estimate it capable at well over 20kl/hour. I don't need more than normal usage per/day, but could pump for irrigation I suppose. It takes 4.2kJ of energy to raise 1 L of H2O by 1 deg C. I can pump many liters/second and harvest say 10C of each liter. So theoretically the right heat pump would make this borehole an energy goldmine. But how do I make electricity?

I came across a you tube clip of a Wave Power Station on a harbor in Brazil. It fascinated me and as i searched some more I realized that Eskom looked at this technology as an option for our energy issues. http://www.eskom.co.za/AboutElectricity/ElectricityTechnologies/Pages/Wave_Power.aspx First clip only have English sub titles. Second one is a similar to first Third is the one i like most. Clever idea that was already in use in 2000

Hi All We have a small guest farm in the Swartberg mountains, which I'm looking to electrify. What may seem like useless sources to others at least provide me with SOMETHING. I have a natural spring coming out of the mountain 40m higher than my guest cottages and I'm looking at installing a permanent magnet alternator with a pelton wheel on it to generate around 400W. I have scoured the internet and something like the Powerspout from New Zealand looks perfect, but will cost me close to R30,000 delivered to my door! That's an expensive prototype, when I'm not even exactly sure of the capabilities of my system. Does anyone know of a local supplier of such altern…

I came across this : http://www.powerspout.com/ Quite interesting if it is as efficient as they claim. I wonder if something like mini pumped storage instead of batteries would be feasible.

Most of the cheap turbines I seem to find are either providing "wild" 3-phase AC (ie Voltage fluctuates along with RPM), or are rectifying the 3-phase to DC, which (judging by the heatsink sizes) must surely result in hefty losses. I realise 3-phase is more efficient for generation and transmission, but when I only need single phase 220V, the equipment for 3-phase gets expensive and the load balancing gets rather complicated. My one big advantage with rectifying to DC, is that as my hydro flow fluctuates I should be able to use everything generated (more water = more RPM = more Watts). If I understand correctly AC generation makes use of a dumpload to control surp…